Talk is cheap for Gus Poyet as Sunderland AFC boss favours action

Sunderland's head coach Gus Poyet celebrates at the end of the game (Image: PA Wire)

Share

Get Sunderland AFC updates directly to your inbox

Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email

Defiant Gus Poyet insists he will not try and spin his way out of trouble just to win over Sunderland’s supporters.

The Black Cats’ head coach admitted he understood the frustrations of the club’s followers in the wake of Tuesday’s home loss to Queens Park Rangers, but says crowd-pleasing platitudes are not the answer.

Poyet, whose team travel to Bradford City in Sunday’s FA Cup fifth-round tie, said: “If I am in the stand watching my team, the one I love and waited all week to watch, and I see 11 players who cannot pass the ball three yards, what am I going to do?

“I am going to get upset. I would do the same. I am a human supporter and I did it when I used to watch Uruguay and we used to kick everybody. That upset me, but it was the way we played.

“I said before I was fed up, so imagine the fans. If I say that and I’ve been here one year and three months, imagine the fans.

“That is what I am trying to tell them. But I can say the same sentence and one person can think I am honest while another thinks I am taking the Mickey. That’s true. What I say is literal. Don’t think I am trying to say something I am not saying.”

Having highlighted his side’s difficulties at the Stadium of Light, he added: “I know what I said and what I meant, and the consequences of the fans writing one way or the other, it doesn’t bother me. We find it easier away from home at the moment. Do you want me to tell the fans something different?”

Acknowledging the need to please the Sunderland faithful, he added: “I agree that the relationship with the fans is very important, but you should know by now that I will not be basing my stay at the club around the supporters or the fans. I don’t think like that.

“I don’t go across the pitch to clap the fans after every away game just because I think that might help me to stay an extra week. That is not me, I don’t care about that. If I clap the fans, it is because I respect them, and when things have been bad, like at Southampton, that is when I will stay.

“But it is all natural, not because it is what I think they want to see. And when I say things, that is natural too. Not because it is what I think they might want to hear.

“I want to convince the fans by playing football and winning. Nothing else.

“Other managers might do things differently, but that is not me. I am not going to be coming up with a plan just to convince the fans. I want the fans to like me for us winning games first, and then for them slowly to start thinking that we have got something.”

Admitting that might mean veering from his principles of passing football, Poyet said: “We need to come up with a way to do that. I had an idea, but it is not working. So we need to find a way.

“If that way is get the ball up front, bang, we will find it. And if we win football games, we win football games.

“How long you can play like that, or how long you can buy players to play that way, time will tell.

“It wasn’t the idea, and I think you know that. The idea was to be in a position now where the team could pass the ball three yards without giving it to the opposition. But it is not, so we need to adapt. I adapt a lot, but I need a bit from the other side as well.”